Samuel Wheeler Moulton

Samuel Wheeler Moulton (January 20, 1821 – June 3, 1905) was an educator, university trustee, attorney, state legislator, and U.S. Representative from Illinois. He played a central role in the development of Illinois’s public education system, served three terms in Congress during and after the Civil War, and was long active in the legal and political life of central Illinois.

Moulton was born on January 20, 1821, in Wenham, Essex County, Massachusetts, the son of William Moulton (1775–1858) and Mary Lunt Moulton (1776–1850). He came from old Massachusetts stock, descending from James Moulton, who likely arrived in Essex County from Norfolk, England, in the early 1630s. He attended public schools in Essex County, completing his primary and secondary education there before seeking opportunities farther west and south.

As a young man, Moulton moved first to Kentucky, where he taught school for several years, and then to Mississippi, where he continued to teach. While teaching in Mississippi he met Mary H. Affleck, whom he married in 1844. Census records show they were married in 1844, although the 1776–1935 Mississippi Marriage Index and the 1763–1900 Illinois Marriage Index do not contain a record of their marriage. In that same year, while living in Yazoo City, he cast his first presidential vote, supporting the Democratic candidate James K. Polk. In 1845 the newly married couple moved to Illinois and settled in Oakland, Coles County, where Mary Moulton’s parents had relocated eight years earlier, a circumstance that likely influenced their decision to begin their life together in the Prairie State.

After settling in Illinois, Moulton commenced the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1847 and began practicing in Sullivan, Illinois, where he was also raised as a Mason that same year. In 1849 he moved to Shelbyville, Illinois, and continued the practice of law. On the central Illinois legal circuit he became a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln. The two appeared together as co-counsel on May 25, 1852, in the Shelby County Circuit Court slander case Johnson v. Hardy, in which Lincoln and Moulton jointly defended Hardy before Circuit Judge David Davis, later a United States Senator and Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The jury found Hardy guilty of slander and imposed a $50 fine, plus $9.85 in court costs. Moulton’s standing at the bar grew steadily, and he became a prominent attorney in Shelby County.

Moulton’s first venture into electoral politics came with his election to the Illinois House of Representatives, in which he served, representing his adopted hometown, from 1852 through 1859. During this relatively short tenure, he became a leading advocate for free public education for all Illinois residents and was instrumental in the establishment of a state normal school for training teachers, the institution that would become Illinois State University at Normal. He also served as a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1856, when James Buchanan was elected president. On July 1, 1859, he became the inaugural president of the Illinois State Board of Education, a position he held from 1859 through 1876. In order to keep the fledgling normal school afloat during the Civil War, he mortgaged his own property, underscoring his personal commitment to public education in Illinois.

During the Civil War, although not widely documented, Moulton served in the United States Army Provost Marshal General’s Department as the enrollment commissioner for the 10th District of Illinois, headquartered at Shelbyville. His performance in this role drew criticism from his superiors, prompting President Abraham Lincoln to write to him on July 31, 1863. Lincoln informed Moulton that he had been “strongly urged on the ground of persistent disobedience of orders and neglect of duty” to remove him from his position, but added that he was “unwilling to do anything in your case which may seem unnecessarily harsh, or at variance with the feelings of personal respect and esteem, with which I have always regarded you.” Lincoln emphasized the necessity of obeying the ranking officer and expressed hope that Moulton would continue in his post under departmental regulations, closing with, “I wish you would write to me. I am very truly your friend and Obt Servt. A Lincoln.” Moulton replied that Lincoln’s “very kind favor of the 31st Ultimo was missent & was not received until to day,” and explained that he had not been constantly at his post because of sickness in his family and pressing business matters. Declaring that his “heart is in the work” and that he wished to act honorably, he suggested that it might be better for him to resign in favor of someone who could attend more constantly to the duties. He enclosed his resignation, which he officially tendered on August 11, 1863.

Moulton was an unsuccessful candidate in 1862 for election as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth Congress. He was subsequently elected as an at-large Republican to the Thirty-ninth Congress, serving from March 4, 1865, to March 3, 1867. He defeated his opponent, Hon. James C. Allen, by a large plurality. During this term he served alongside another Shelbyville attorney, Anthony Thornton, who also sat in the House, an unusual circumstance given that Shelby County’s population had only reached 25,476 by 1870 and yet produced two of Illinois’s fourteen U.S. Representatives from 1865 to 1867. Highly regarded within the Illinois Republican establishment, Moulton had his name placed in nomination for another congressional term at the state convention, but party leaders concluded that “the best interests of the party required General Logan.” Moulton “cheerfully declined being a candidate, and extended General Logan a warm and enthusiastic support.” Both he and John A. Logan were former Democrats who had turned Republican at the outbreak of the war and had served together in the Illinois House of Representatives in the 1850s. In 1868 Moulton sought the Republican nomination for Governor of Illinois, but, “having no war record,” he was, in the words of contemporaries, “shelved by the military element in the convention” and was defeated by John Palmer, who went on to win the general election.

Sometime after leaving federal office in 1867, Moulton disaffiliated from the Republican Party and returned to the Democratic fold. He was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1885. During this later period of congressional service he represented Illinois as a member of the Democratic Party and contributed to the legislative process during three terms in office overall, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American history. In the Forty-eighth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Mileage. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1884. After his final stint in Congress, Moulton resumed the practice of law in Shelbyville. His political affiliations shifted once more in the late nineteenth century, and he was again associated with the Republican Party after 1896.

In his later years, Moulton remained a prominent figure in Shelbyville. His Italianate mansion, built in 1875 at 607 South Broadway Street, became a local landmark and is now part of the Lincoln Memorial History Tour. During his lifetime, a small settlement in Rose Township, directly southwest of Shelbyville, was named Moulton. At a gathering there in 1850, with more than 100 residents in the area, Michael Gregory, Moulton, and Anthony Thornton drew straws to determine the town’s name; Moulton drew the long straw, and the settlement was named for him. It was annexed by the City of Shelbyville in 1877 and became known as the Citizens Addition. In Shelbyville, the middle school, the former Moulton United Methodist Church, and Moulton Drive all bear his name. A large oil portrait of Moulton, painted by noted Shelbyville artist Robert Marshall Root, hangs in the large circuit courtroom of the historic Shelby County Courthouse where he practiced for decades.

Moulton’s contributions to education were commemorated statewide. Built in 1920, Moulton Hall at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, was named in his honor. The building houses various administrative offices for the university as well as the Department of Physics, reflecting his foundational role in the creation and survival of the institution he had helped to establish as a normal school. His long service as president of the Illinois State Board of Education and his willingness to mortgage his own property to sustain the school during the Civil War cemented his reputation as one of the chief architects of public education in Illinois.

Samuel Wheeler Moulton died at his home in Shelbyville on June 3, 1905, at the age of 84. An elaborate funeral was held in Shelbyville with full Masonic honors, and he was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. His wife, Mary H. Moulton, followed him in death in 1921, and they are interred beside each other. His life and career, spanning law, education, and politics, left a lasting imprint on both his community and the state of Illinois.